Five UH profs claim earth is flat, Elvis lives and no sweatshops!

Question: What do five University of Houston professors have in common with people who believe the earth is flat or people that believe Elvis is still alive?

Answer: They all ignore the facts, evidence, proof, and documentation.

Imagine if these five professors let their students engage in the same behavior they do in their classes. If they did, then all their students would get A grades. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. In July five university professors, (Steven G. Craig, Econ, Richard M. Alderman, Law, Jim Granato, Poly Sci, Saleha Khumawala, Acct., Harrell Rodgers Jr., Poly Sci) claimed that UH logo apparel was not made in sweatshops.

Well UH USAS you ask, they must have based their claims on facts, evidence, proof or some kind of documentation, right? No. In fact this “task force” claimed to have visited factories, but did not report what they saw! Mainly this task force met, discussed and reviewed the Worker Rights Consortium, Designated Supplier Program and “Fair Labor Association” (corporate front group, see: flawatch.org) They also met with the manager of the bookstore and concluded “Barnes and Noble Bookstore, has taken reasonable steps to ensure that it is not selling apparel produced by sweatshop labor.” In other words if the bookstore manager said so IT MUST BE TRUE. You’ll just have to take their word for it! Don’t bring up those pesky facts like the bookstore has a profit motive to sell clothes and not reveal where they are made and under what conditions. Surely a corporate bookstore manager always tells the truth!

So let’s sum it up, these five faculty members asked the UH Barnes and Noble bookstore manager if he was taking “reasonable steps” to make sure the UH logo clothes weren’t made in sweatshops and Mr. Bookstore Manager of course said he was, so that’s the end of the story. Of course we don’t know what these “reasonable steps” are, but hey you gotta just take their word for it. You can read their entire “report” here: 070708apparel-tforce-report.html

Save your tuition money and don’t take any classes from these professors. If they make statements about no sweatshops without any evidence how can they have any academic credibility? But wait it gets better, not one of these professors has ever published in a field related to sweatshops, labor, corporate responsibility, marketing or anything remotely related to the issue. There are UH professors that have published peer reviewed articles on sweatshops or related topics but they were not picked to be on the committee. Avoid these profs like the plague. Next thing they’ll be telling us is that UH is a first tier university!!! Just take their word for it, no evidence needed.

If you are unlucky enough to have one or more of these professors for a class, just tell them that you did your homework, no need to check. Then tell them they need to let you grade your own exams. No need to turn in your exams they can take your word for it that you got an A. Hey they said Barnes and Noble bookstore can assure them that they don’t use sweatshops to make UH apparel then certainly a student can assure them that they got an A on their exam!

Unfortunately unless your clothes were union made you can almost guarantee that they were made in a sweatshop. Learn the basics about sweatshops in a few minutes on Coop America’s great website: Coop America sweatshop basics